A series of intimate conversations with a wise guru is a compelling idea. How many times have each of us wished for answers to life's deep questions? In Midnights with the Mystic, Cheryl Simone relates her personal experience of learning at the feet of Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev, India's most sought-after mystic. As we share in her profound experiences, we are challenged to embrace the possibility that to each of us is available a higher realm of reality, a peak of consciousness, an entrée into the realm of freedom and bliss.

Cheryl Simone is an entrepreneur, wife and mother, was the typical baby boomer in search of an authentic spiritual experience. Professionally successful, yet spiritually arid, she discovered a way into what she was looking for in the teachings of Sadhguru.

Sadhguru Vasudev is a spiritual master with a difference. An arresting blend of profundity and pragmatism, his life and work serve as a reminder that inner sciences are not an esoteric discipline from an outdated past, but a contemporary science, vitally relevant to our times. Probing, passionate, and provocative, deeply insightful, devastatingly logical, and unfailingly witty, Sadhguru's talks have earned him the reputation of a speaker and opinion-maker of international renown.

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Then Sadhguru asked me if I had heard that some researchers in India had been scanning the brains of people who have been through Isha Yoga’s Inner Engineering course and practicing the techniques for more than three months.

I had heard about that, so I nodded yes.

Sadhguru went on to say that the scientists had found that the coherence between the practitioners’ right and left brain were phenomenally high. “That means, Cheryl, that you will get to use a little more of your brain than before. Generally they say that people are only using 12 percent of their brain, but from my experience of people, I don’t believe they are using even that,” he said and let our a hoot of infectious laughter.

Then he went on, “Yoga is the path of becoming limitless. Yoga transforms and liberates human beings so that they can reach this unbounded state. Humans, unlike animals,do not merely exist. They are becoming. ‘Human’ is not an established quality; one has to grow into it. One has to become that. To evolve as a human being is to become aware of one’s limitations, to strive, with intense passion, toward the transcendence for which we all have the potential. Yoga is a way of finding your ultimate potential. In a specific context, yoga had come to mean spiritual union with the absolute. Liberation while living is the goal of yoga, the highest experience, a fusion of the individual with the universal.”

Although his world seemed both inspiring and filled with possibility, I caught myself again wondering if such transcendence really could be possible for me. Even though many remarkable things had happened to me, I continued to wonder if I would truly be able to become self-realized in this lifetime. Part of me wondered how much the yoga, the practices, had to do with it. It’s a technology that affects not only your body, mind, and energy, but that also somehow makes you receptive. I know it’s a big part of it, but I also know that it’s not the whole thing. Some of the practices Sadhguru teaches are similar to those I was exposed to in the past, but he puts them together in a completely different way. Even with all the yoga, Sadhguru did in previous lifetimes, and with all that he accomplished, he said that he did not become enlightened. The reason why is shrouded in mystery. I knew the practices were working, but perhaps this process is more than something I can do myself. Something seems to have to happen that I’m not doing. I have often heard Sadhguru say that “you have to put yourself aside.”

Perhaps the answer to this question could be found in Sadhguru’s own story. . .